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Monday, October 31, 2011

Though it's impossible to say exactly when it will happen, demographers have chosen the date that is October 31, 2011 to mark the milestone. Humanity remains on a steep growth curve. The world's population is estimated to reach seven billion on Monday, according to the United Nations. The number is growing by 200,000 people a day, and experts predict that by the end of this century, it could reach 10 billion.

Newly born babies rest inside a ward at a hospital on the occasion of "World Population Day" in the northern Indian city Lucknow, July 11, 2009

A doctor holds up the newborn baby of Yang Huiqing, Oct. 24, 2011.

On October 31, 2011, the United Nations is expected to announce a projected world population figure of 7 billion. This global milestone presents both an opportunity and a challenge for the planet. While more people are living longer and healthier lives, says the U.N.

But the gap between rich and poor are widening and more people than ever are vulnerable to food insecurity and water shortages. Because censuses are infrequent and incomplete, no one knows the precise date that we will hit the 7 billion mark - the Census Bureau puts it somewhere next March. In the last 50 years, humanity has more than doubled. What could the next decade mean for our numbers and the planet.

The United Nations estimates that on Monday 31 October the world's population will reach seven billion.

The Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, California is celebrating their 15th year hosting the BubbleFest; a three-week long exhibition of hands on bubble science, as well as a Bubble Show featuring Fan Yang and son Deni Yang, showcasing their passion and skill for bubble making. Fan has been practicing and working with bubbles for 27 years. He has crafted an unique art form, creating unimaginable bubble shapes from a soap solution.

The Discovery Science Center and the Yang family partnered to attempt the Most People Inside a Soap Bubble. After much planning and configuring, they constructed a system to create a huge soap bubble to fit more people inside a soap bubble

On April 4th, 2011 at the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana Families lined up and signed up to take part in the record attempt. In a very organized fashion, people were led on to a stage where they were strategically placed. Fan, Deni and Melody Yang worked together to simultaneously pull up pulleys, drawing the bubble wand up and around the people.

As part of the Guinness World Records guidelines, the participants inside the bubble had to be at least 5 feet tall. A total of 151 people were inside the bubble, but only 118 people officially qualified as over the height requirement; setting the new record at 118 people inside a soap bubble.

The biggest and heaviest gold coin in the world has been unveiled by the Perth Mint in Australia. The giant coin weighs more than one tonne and is worth A $53.5 million (£35.1m). With a denomination of A$1 million, the massive coin weighs some 2,231lb and is 99.99 per cent pure gold. It is 31 inches wide and is more than 4.7 inches thick.

Perth Mint Chief Executive Officer Ed Harbuz said that the Mint' s dedicated team of talented artists and technical staff worked tirelessly for months to create a coin of this magnitude. The stunning coin is the pinnacle of ingenuity and innovation for which the Perth Mint is renowned.

"To cast and handcraft a coin of this size and weight was an incredible challenge, one which few other mints would not even consider," Harbuz said.

The massive coin features a bounding red kangaroo on one side and the Queen's motif on the other. It is Australian legal tender and has a denomination of 1 million AU dollars ($1.05 million) - well below its gold value. The giant coin is a magnificent Australian icon symbolizing one of the Perth Mint's most extraordinary accomplishments in its 112 years of history.

The life of Dai Guohong was rather ordinary before 2008. He was 18 years old when he lost his both legs in the horrible Wenchuan earthquake. He didn't give in, trained a lot and has now become one of China's top swimmers.

If you watch enough television shows and movies, then you might even start to notice that a bunch of the same props are used over and over again. I first noticed this with a magazine prop in various television shows including Married With Children, which featured a gum advertisement on the back cover. Someone on Reddit recently put together a compilation of photos from various television shows, commercials and movies, showing how one newspaper prop gets around and is reused, and reused again.

I don’t know the story behind this prop newspaper, but I assume it was created as a royalty free prop for television shows. Somewhere along the line, the prop became a recurring gag between propmasters. Something like how sound designers reuse the Wilhem Scream in every movie. Here are some examples...